If you haven’t heard of the Playground in downtown Santa Ana, then you’ve been living under a rock. With an ever changing menu (we’re talking faster than I can buy a new pair of shoes) that gets printed daily, part of the fun is never knowing what you are gonna get.

(Im)patiently waiting for our food…(the hardest part of eating)

Cheers!

[pictured]: Blumenthal potatoes with spicy chimichurri and sour cream

[pictured]: ???? ???? Velvet sunrise, pine nut crumiel, lime zest, black pepper (yes the question marks are actually the name of the dish. let’s just say it tastes like rainbows and rhymes with “squaw bra”…)

[pictured]: some kind of trout over roasted corn with green sauce (they weren’t kidding when they said menus printed daily. can’t even look up the name of this dish on their online menu so you are just stuck with my super accurate description)

[pictured]: 48 hour short ribs. I don’t remember exactly everything that was in it, but what I do remember is that they gave us a steak knife that we did not use because I could have ripped this meat apart with a toothpick.

[not pictured]: black mission fig sticky toffee pudding (aka: the BEST dessert ever). sorry we ate it faster than a camera could take a picture so you are just gonna hafta use your imagination. It is one of their more regular dessert menu items, so do yourself a favor and order it.

Now before you blindly heed our advice to go dine at the Playground (which you should because we are always right), here are a few tips/notes to keep in mind before going:

Take the wording on the menu very seriously – just like we are end all, be all of all things borderline fab, the Playground is the same way with their food. So that means, NO MODIFICATIONS WHATSOEVER. Just shut up and eat your food.

Order menu items with “?” or vague, unusual, illogical sounding names. I know this may run afoul with most of your menu ordering practices, but trust us on this one. You will always be pleasantly surprised with deliciousness such as things that rhyme with “squaw bra”…

There are no wine corkage fees (shocking) but don’t forget to try some beer from their phenomenal craft beer list.

Be food-centric. They worship food over hospitality. Considering I know nothing about food, I will gladly leave it to the experts to tell me what they think is the best way something is served/prepared/cooked, etc. Even if you think you do know a thing or two about food, they don’t wanna hear it. I like to think of it as respecting the chef as an artist – enjoy the experience (or not), form your opinions, don’t mess with the art, and carry on your merry way.

Keeping the above policies in mind, you are now ready for the Playground. As their menu aptly states, “welcome to the resistance”. Bon appetit!

This week I finally got to satisfy my 3 week craving of Mediterranean food at a new OC casual dining spot, Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill. As you already know from Alice before, we eat fancy here in suburbia. So naturally, I busted out my suit & tie for this formal affair:

I pretty much love everything about Mediterranean food. Even better when you can have it dished out to your liking via Chipotle style, with a variety of sides and sauces to choose from. Chicken schwarma with baba ganoush? Sure. Would you like to add some hummus? Yes please. Tabouli? Pile it on. Falafel? Why not? Tatziki, garlic, and cilantro sauce? Drown my plate please. As much as I want and no judgment (at least not openly). This dining model is GENIUS! If only all things in life were dished Chipotle style…but then everywhere would go bankrupt because of people like me who like a little bit of everything (sorry Subway sandwich maker, yes even the jalapenos too). Thankfully this is Mediterranean food so I can feel a little bit better about my waistline with these extra ad ins. Now more hummus please 😛

When you think of Portland, you generally think of young, hip urbanites wearing flannel, drinking coffee or brewing beer with this song playing in the background, right? Well, I discovered this is 100% ACCURATE. And I also discovered Portland makes a mean donut, among other things. Yup, get ready folks for one of my favorite kind of trips: FOOD-CATION (a.k.a. stomach marathon).

Naturally, the only way to follow up eating donuts is to eat pizza, of course. 3 a.m. pizza stop at Sizzle Pie, open late until 4 a.m. for post-debauchery convenience.

Day 1
Brunch at Pine State Biscuits [pictured] “The Reggie Deluxe” (which is the “Reggie” with an egg on it, duh) – fried chicken, bacon and cheese topped with gravy. And the gravy was AMAZE-ing. [pictured] “Hash Ups” – golden hash browns topped with STEAK (yeah, that’s right), grilled onions, mushrooms, and melted cheese. And we washed it all down with some delicious morning cocktails (hey, it’s never too early for bourbon, amiright?)

After lunch, we headed to Salt and Straw for Portland’s “farm-to-cone” ice cream, whatever that means. All I know is that it was DELICIOUS. [pictured] honey lavender, stumptown coffee and bourbon, salted caramel, and pear & blue cheese flavors.

Since somebody (who shall not be named) drank too much at breakfast, we needed a little coffee pick me up and stopped by Barista for some much needed caffeine.

For after dinner drinks, we headed to McMenamins Kennedy School (yeah, that’s right, Portlanders drink at ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS guys), which was the weirdest, kind of creepy/haunted, original hotel/bar concept I’ve been too, in a really cool way. You just need to go see it for yourself and grab a drink in “Detention”.

We took a short break from eating to visit Multnomah Falls, the highest waterfall in Portland, which is about a 40 minute drive away. There was an option to do a longer 5 mile hike, but let’s be real guys. We came here to eat. And we only went hiking SO WE CAN EAT MORE. But the greenery was a nice touch.

After hiking, we were naturally hungry and thirsty. Begin search for BEER. Apparently Portland has more breweries and strip clubs per capital than anywhere else in the U.S.? Who knew? So finding a beer was fairly easy and quenched our thirst at the Bye and Bye. And we just so happened to stumble across a street fair in Burnside and picked us up some fresh corn on the cob to accompany our beers:

It got dark eventually, so it was time to eat again. There was a 1.5 hour wait at Pok Pok so we decided to wait it out at its sister bar, Whiskey Soda Lounge, which features drinking food and libations of Thailand. There, we had the infamous fish sauce chicken wings, which are essentially like meat candy. Or meat drugs. Pick your poison. [also pictured] Phat Hoi Laai (stir friend manila clams with chilies, garlic, and Thai basil). Can we open a location in L.A.? PLEASE?

Then it was finally time for dinner (because chicken wings and clams were snacks, duh) at Pok Pok. [pictured] papaya salad, bean thread noodles with prawns and pork belly baked in clay pot over charcoal, and boar collar meat served with chilled mustard greens.

For post-dinner drinks, we visited Kask for some hand crafted cocktails where one Yelper quite accurately coined the bartenders as “nicely dressed booze angels”. Check out what to drink here.

Day 3
We decided to take a break from fried chicken and got donuts and coffee for breakfast instead. Oh my, I stumbled on coffee donut heaven. Stumptown Coffee is a must in Portland and its served everywhere. There is one conveniently next to the ultra hip Ace Hotel which is ALSO conveniently one block away from Blue Star Donuts. How do I begin to describe these donuts? They TASTE LIKE RAINBOWS. [pictured] blueberry bourbon donut and meyer lemon curd donut. [not pictured] dulce de leche & hazelnut donut, banana pudding donut.

Since we still had our rental car, we decided to roadtrip again but this time heading west to the coast to check out Cannon Beach, about 2.5 hours from the city. Now let me just say, in Oregon, there are trees as far as the eye can see. You definitely don’t get much of THAT in SoCal. Although we DO have palm trees…

And the best photo bomb award goes to…

Naturally all that driving made us hungry so grabbed some local seafood fare in the cute, sleepy beach town nearby at Ecola Seafood Market. [pictured] fish & chips, clam chowder, and fish tacos. (At this point, no one is waiting patiently for photos. Dig right in, guys.)

For our final dinner in Portland, we went to Tasty n Sons. At this point, my camera was out of battery and my iPhone was out of storage space from taking too many pictures so you are just gonna have to use your imagination on this one. [not pictured] linguini with ragu & mascapone, bacon wrapped dates, steak frites, fried cauliflower, and peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. Just drool at their menu, here.

Day 4
On our last day of bingeing, we went back for MORE stumptown coffee and blue star donuts (like I said, RAINBOWS people) and we experienced the final missing piece of Portland food culture: the food cart (which is essentially food trucks without the wheels).

Then we decided to burn off some calories by reading at Powell’s City of Books (it’s a full city block, they don’t call it CITY of books for nothing). Map required.

Oh yeah, what did I wear on this trip? I was too busy taking pictures of food and eating, I forgot to take pictures of my clothes. Oops. Here is the only picture I took of myself the whole weekend:

talk about a month of celebrations! our friend Shrutee’s bday celebration was this past weekend, which meant that my usual saturday night on the couch watching hbo go was not happening. finally – a reason to put on some make up and break in my 1st pair of louboutins! too bad my toes felt like they were going to bleed off…at least they’d match the red soles?

anyways, back to the celebrations! shrutee’s bachelorette party is this weekend, so stay tuned for some fun miami posts next week! a birthday AND a soon to be mrs? that girl is on a roll! 😀

a close up of my first pair of louboutins, which i’ve had since christmas, but haven’t worn until now…

A couple weeks ago (okay maybe months ago, I know procrastinating is bad) I flew to San Francisco for a quick weekend romp to celebrate the birthdays of my two dearest friends. This means 5 things were pretty much guaranteed:

Don’t tell Los Angeles, but I’m having a love affair with San Francisco. While I will always forever be a SoCal girl at heart, in another lifetime, I would definitely be a SF hippie flower child. Last year, SF and I got a little more serious when I decided to move there for 7 months volunteering and living out of a suitcase, while hunting a job. Boho hippie living at its finest. And boy oh boy, did we have fun. In 7 short months, my vagabondish self lived in 5 different apartments from SOMA to the Mission to Berkeley and ate myself silly to my heart’s content.

During my last trip, I got to revisit some of my favorites places I discovered while wandering in SF. This includes a short hike at Lands End and Sutros Baths:

Not to mention the weather that weekend was SoCal girl approved – clear and sunny (although I would have appreciated it to be a smidge warmer with no gusty wind and absence of disparate neighborhood subclimates, but then we wouldn’t in San Francisco anymore, now would we :P). But all in all, the perfect SF weekend. See?

Special thanks to my dearest friend Mere for housing me for the weekend and putting up with my shenanigans. A girl could not ask for a better life adventure partner than you! ❤